High score review: Netflix’s story of the “golden age” of gaming is honestly solid

We at the gaming section of Ars Technica are fluttering by High score, the latest docu-series launching on Netflix on August 19th. The easiest way to describe this gaming-centric interview series, divided into six 40-minute episodes, is to give a shoutout to our very own War Stories video series.

For a few years, War Stories asked developers of favorite game series to explain how they overcame problems and got their eventual classics to your favorite PCs and consoles. The new series from Netflix does something very similar: it asks members of the gaming industry a telling piece about the so-called ‘golden age of gaming’, which in their eyes begins with Space Invaders in arcades and ends with Doom on PC.

All in all, I am happy High score exists. If you want to watch it uncritically, especially with people who do not necessarily play video games, you can look forward to a mix of intriguing and all-too-familiar classic game stories, told with high production values ​​and clear flowing stories. For the most part, the series is worthy, not embarrassing – a fact that the inner 12-year-old enjoyed in me, who still has a chip on his shoulder about being an “outcast” for most of my youth.

Parchment, magic hats, and “comfort and peace”

Maybe it’s the War Stories bias in me though, but the biggest weakness of the series is its desperation to stick all of its interviews into a coherent “game story” story.

In isolation, High score has some of the best interviews with lighting pieces for gaming industry I have ever seen. The absolute highlight is an interview with Roberta and Ken Williams, the co-founders and architects behind Sierra Entertainment. Together, they tell the most detailed story I’ve ever seen on camera about their work on the 1980 Apple II game Mystery House. This includes Roberta drawing a sheet of parchment to draw a facsimile of her original Mystery House design documents for the Netflix camera crew. I may have never seen a nicer “how it was made” demonstration of an original story of a game.

Like-minded interviews play out over the span of six episodes of the series, and High score hits the ground running with Taito mastermind Tomohiro Nishikado telling the creation story of Space Invaders. We see him playing with an old electromechanical machine “magic hat”; we see him imagine that Tokyo is overrun with massive, robotic spider creatures; we see him draw pages of original concept art, while he explains the design decisions that drive what the characters of the final game looked like. As the very first story from the very first episode, it certainly sets a tone.

This is followed by a refreshing conversation with legendary programmer Rebecca Heineman about her origins in the gaming industry: as a competitor in one of the world’s first examples of a formal gaming championship. This segment is rich in archival footage and insight by Heineman, along with her sincere admission that games were a crucial escape during her childhood wrestling with gender dysphoria: “[Gaming] allowed me to play as a woman. I have always identified myself as a woman. Unfortunately, my anatomy did not agree. So when I was playing video games, I was in this virtual world where I was surrounded by strangers and ignored the world around me. It was the only place I could find comfort and peace. “

The rest of this pilot episode connects badly to other points of the 80’s, including a great story of the children of engineer Jerry Lawson. He has largely received credit for developing cartridge-based gaming, while making the otherwise unsuccessful Fairchild Channel F console. Some stories from the episode – in particular those from Mrs. Pac-Manoriginated as a “speed kit” – will not be news to savvier game-history fans. But they are at least told in polished, humorous fashion, and their pixelated art of their montage sequences are a clever touch.

Join the Nintendo Fun Club today!

But let’s go back to Heineman – her experience in the gaming industry High score concerned, is degraded to their victory in a Space Invaders tournament. The series does not mention it Bard’s Tale, Wasteland, or even Heineman is hired as a 16-year-old game studio programmer. And as the series rolls on, more endings appear in gameplay stories.

The issue is that High score lands many formative interviews on her quest to tell a particular history of the sector. But if the crew did not score a particular interview, then the issue in question hardly exists. We only hear about Shigeru Miyamoto’s game design skills as English speaking members of the Star Fox team (Giles Goddard, Dylan Cuthbert) are interviewed about that project. Otherwise, the history of Nintendo is told almost exclusively by one of its American PR leaders, who tells the story of the formation of Nintendo Power as a magazine. The story is well told in High scoreThe format is, however, it overshadows Nintendo designs like Satoru Iwata (and, oddly enough, claims that the Nintendo Fun Club Newsletter never existed).

And we only hear about one series of Electronic Arts, John Madden Football, because that’s how High score tries to explain Sega’s console war dominance in the sports genre. This sports sequence drove me especially crazy. Madden launched almost simultaneously on Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, so it was a terrible example to hang this anecdote. Plus, Sega’s bullishness about self-published sports games, mostly with athletes added, went completely unnoticed. Currently, Sega is selling aggressively Sports Talk Football with Joe Montana as a rival to Madden, but Netflix leaves that and other major Sega sports games unmentioned.

High score includes one story of famous failure: ET for the Atari 2600, as told by lead designer Howard Scott Warshaw (the genius behind it Yars’ revenge). Yet Trip Hawkins, who guests on High score talk about MaddenThe development does not get the chance to talk about its own failure of console launch, the 3DO. Other notable failures of the gaming industry do not go in the same direction.

Some of the series ‘endings would have been more forgivable if Netflix hadn’t been so determined on the next winners of the’ 80s and early’s 90s gaming tournaments. Heineman’s story is a gem. The same cannot be said for segments of other episodes dedicated to the Nintendo World Championship and the Sega Rock the Rock Championship. If this was a longer series, a whole episode about early game championships could be wonderful. But here, these stories suffer because they only interview one participant each, dragging too long and posting far more cultural imports at the tournaments than they are likely worth. (I know, the Nintendo World Championship was massive for my generation, but High scoreThe version of that story is not told with multiple participants, with Nintendo organizers, or even with a mention of tie-in movie The wizards.)

Do not play things for playful novices

Again, I have to insist: if you want to enjoy the series uncritically and deal with a mix of narrative delicacies and slower, “Guess, I’ll check my phone for a few minutes”, High score has enough good content to sit through. This is significantly encouraged by Charles Martinet as narrator; you may recognize his voice as that of Super Mario and other famous Nintendo characters, and he treats his humorous enough script with a soft cadence. (No, he never sneaks an “it-a me!” Into the series. Super Mario gets paltry lip service through the course of High score, honestly.)

Just be warned that some unusual choices for interviews and skipping important developments in the history of game history will leave everyone knowledgeable about gaming history writing on their TV. Your favorite console, arcade, portable, or PC game from the era in question is probably, net enough time or coverage provided by the Netflix movie team. (I, for one, could not believe how little was said about it Tetris. Tetris!)

With that in mind, keep crying to a minimum when someone is having a good time not knowing better and watching the entire series at your site. Once you’re done taking Netflix, our War Stories series will feed you the goodies of game history.